By David Stevenson – Despite all the grim news surrounding gold, I find myself looking afresh at gold mining equity funds and wondering whether now is the time to start quietly increasing my exposure.

In essence, investors face two equally dismal choices. Do they focus on investing with an active fund manager who will “know” which miners to back or do they invest in a passive ETF? The second equally lethal choice is whether they should back larger lower-cost miners or junior miners where the rewards could be huge?

S&P Dow Jones has expanded its Latin American product offering with the launch of the S&P MILA Financials and S&P MILA Resources indices. The indices are designed to measure the primary equity sectors represented on the MILA (or Mercado Integrado Latino Americano) market. The MILA is a regional equity trading platform integrating the main stock exchanges of Chile, Colombia and Peru.

SPDR ETFs, the exchange-traded funds platform of State Street Global Advisors (SSgA), has expanded its equity income line-up with the launch of global and pan-Asian ‘Dividend Aristocrats’ ETFs on the London Stock Exchange and Deutsche Börse (Xetra). Scott Ebner, head of global product development at SSgA, said: “Our approach to dividend investing at SPDRs has been centred around indices that not only favour high-yielding stocks, but also focus on the sustainability of yield”.

By David Stevenson – Why are so few investors currently buying into consumer staples sector ETFs? I realise that this isn’t exactly one of those raging questions that ranks up there alongside “should we dump Europe?” and “why, oh, why are most of the singers on The Voice so bloody awful?”, but for investors I think the question really, really matters. To understand why I’m so nonplussed, let’s rewind the investment debate and establish some basic principles. The first and most basic principle is that investors worldwide are fearful about macro risk.

S&P Dow Jones Indices has unveiled the S&P 500 Buyback Index, a new index tracking the performance of the S&P 500 constituents with the largest stock buyback programmes. The methodology behind the index, which has been designed to underlie index-linked products such as exchange-traded funds (ETFs), is refreshingly simple. Essentially, the index measures the performance of the top 100 stocks with the highest buyback ratio in the S&P 500 in the last 12 months. It has outperformed the S&P 500 over one, three and five years.

Stoxx, a leading index provider, has introduced the Euro Stoxx 50 BuyWrite 100% Index. The index measures the performance of a buy-write or covered-call strategy based on the Euro Stoxx 50 Index, the eurozone’s leading blue-chip equity index. The new index, which has been designed to underlie index-linked financial products such as exchange-traded funds (ETFs), represents a hypothetical portfolio of a long position in the Euro Stoxx 50 and a sold – or written – call option based on the same index.

Global inflows into exchange-traded products (ETPs) slowed a little in April 2013 to $10.3 billion, according to the latest ETP Landscape report from BlackRock. However, as of April month end, ETPs have seen inflows of $79.9 billion in the year to date, which is more than $13 billion ahead of the $66.3 billion of inflows collected during the same period last year. This is despite a major setback for gold ETPs, which have been hit with outflows of almost $18 billion.

The pioneering S&P 500 Equal Weight Index (EWI) and Guggenheim S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF (RSP) have marked their tenth anniversaries. Prior to their launch, the overwhelming majority of indices and ETFs were weighted by market capitalisation. And while market capitalisation weightings still dominate today, alternatively weighted approaches are becoming increasingly popular.

First Trust Advisors, a global provider of exchange-traded funds (ETFs), has rolled out its fourth actively managed ETF. Listed on the Nasdaq exchange, the First Trust Senior Loan ETF (FTSL) seeks to generate high current income and preserve capital by investing primarily in a diversified portfolio of first-lien senior floating-rate bank loans. The fund attempts to outperform both the S&P/LSTA US Leveraged Loan 100 Index and the Markit iBoxx USD Leveraged Loan Index.

Bank of China (HK) and FTSE Group have announced a partnership to develop a new suite of indices designed to measure the performance of Renminbi (RMB)-denominated bonds issued in offshore jurisdictions. The indices will be structured to help global investors to better capture the opportunities in the so-called ‘dim sum’ market and to provide an industry standard benchmark to meet increasing international demand for access to RMB-linked fixed income products, particularly exchange-traded funds.